Monthly Archives: February 2015

Locale-adaptive pages change their content to reflect the user’s language or perceived geographic location. Since, by default, Googlebot requests pages without setting an Accept-Language HTTP request header and uses IP addresses that appear to be located in the USA, not all content variants of locale-adaptive pages may be indexed completely.
Today we’re introducing new locale-aware crawl configurations for Googlebot for pages that we detect may adapt the content they serve based on the request’s language and perceived location. These are:

Geo-distributed crawling where Googlebot would start to use IP addresses that appear to be coming from outside the USA, in addition to the current IP addresses that appear to be from the USA that Googlebot currently uses.

Language-dependent crawling where Googlebot would start to crawl with an Accept-Language HTTP header in the request.

As these new crawling configurations are enabled automatically for pages we detect to be locale-adaptive, you may notice changes in how we crawl and show your site in Google search results without you altering your CMS or server settings.

Note that these new configurations do not alter our recommendation to use separate URLs with rel=alternate hreflang annotations for each locale. We continue to support and recommend using separate URLs as they are still the best way for users to interact and share your content, and also to maximize indexing and better ranking of all variants of your content.

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Search engine optimization has significantly changed in the past recent years, there is much to the amiss of Google’s guidelines. As we move into 2015 and we look to grow our website’s organic traffic, what will be most important for everyone of us is to look for on-page SEO?

Here’s a list of on-page SEO techniques that you are probably already using but are still important in 2015 and also some newer developments in SEO that you should consider in your strategy.

SEO

1. One Keyword Optimization

Those days of keyword “stuffing” are over now, but still there is a need to keep our web site pages optimized around one central idea and keyword. Keywords should appear in important on-page elements like the page title, heading, image alt text, and naturally throughout the page copy, but you should still be sure to craft each of these items for humans, not search engines.

Keywords Are Important But Not Verbatim

Considering the announcement of Google in 2014, that their paid search services, AdWords, would no longer rely on exact match keywords but also co-varieties of a keyword, it is likely that the same holds true for organic search, although it has not been explicitly announced. Keywords no longer need to be the exact same variation as displayed in your keyword tool. As per the recent update, In addition to the above, even if a searcher misspells, Google will still help them find your website despite the variation of the keyword optimized on your site.

Short Descriptive page links / urls

A URL is one of the first things a search engine uses to determine page rank, which is why it is really important to make your URLs easy to crawl. This can be done by keeping URLs short (this is also beneficial for UX), aligning to the page’s topic and keyword, and ensuring that URLs help you to categorize your site pages.

4. Optimizing Page Titles

A title tag is used by search engines to display a page in search results and can also be found at the top of your browser. Title tags tell search engines and searchers what the page is about. Since Google will only display between 50-60 characters in the title tag, you should keep title tags under 55 characters and try to drive people to click with compelling copy. You should also put keywords or topics towards the front of the title.

5. Utilization of Proper Heading Tags

Heading tags should clearly tell the reader and search engines about the page’s topic. A search engine is able to identify the heading when it is tagged by bracketing text in within the page’s HTML (Note: If you have a CMS or COS like HubSpot or WordPress, this is usually coded in the background). Heading tags help tell a search engine the level of importance of the content by also using <H2> and <H3> tags. You can check your site’s current heading tags by viewing in HTML view.

In addition to what you should do with heading tags , you should also avoid a few things including:

Avoid using generic terms like “Home” or “Products”

Don’t put important information that would likely be your as an image.

6. Optimize Image Alt Text

While you should not hide your heading tag in an image, you should still give search engines more opportunities to link to your website by adding keywords in the image alt text and file name.

7. Grow Natural Links

Google continues to use natural, quality inbound links as a main ranking factor. In 2015, you should closely monitor inbound links to ensure that they are constantly growing and that the inbound links come from quality websites.

8. Increase Site Speed

After 2011, according to Google update, it is made apparent that site speed matters a lot in search rankings, and today, with a bigger emphasis on the user experience than ever before, site speed will continue to be a critical ranking factor. Users don’t like to wait, and we are becoming more and more accustomed to the fast load times, which means our site will be left in the dust when a user must wait. There are a few important things you can do to speed up site speed:

Test site speed using Google or a built-in CMS tool like utilized in HubSpot

Ensure your web server can handle you size of your company and website needs. Overloaded web servers can slow down load times.

You may also find that one of the following culprits is slowing down times:

Embedded videos or media

Using a lot of images

Images that are not compressed to minimize pixels before uploading

Clunky coding

Using a lot of plugins

If you suspect any of the above are causing slow load times, you can find experts to help clean up your site or minimize the use of each.

9. HTTP Vs. HTTPS: Why They Matter

As per the latest update of google, With a big push to make the web world more secure, Google has began emphasizing the importance of utilizing HTTPS. While many websites have traditionally ran on a Hyper Text Transfer Protocal (HTTP), a Hyper Transfor Protocal Secure (HTTPS) ensures that a website is encrypted and cannot be hacked. With Google beginning to test the waters in using HTTPS as a ranking factor, it will be important to secure your website with HTTPS in 2015.

10. Mobile Search Implications

As world is getting caught in smaller devices, With nearly 40% of organic traffic coming from mobile devices in 2014, it should come as no surprise that mobile-friendly websites will rank better with Google. To ensure you are mobile optimized, you should be avoiding common mistakes described by Google including faulty redirects, mobile-only 404s, blocked media, and slow mobile load times.

Although it may feel like Google is trying to make our jobs as inbound marketers more difficult, they ultimately want to provide the best user experience, which should be the goal of your website as well.